Check out this free fingerstyle guitar lesson from Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman. In this lesson Darrin teaches Holiday By The Scorpions – Easy Fingerstyle Song with free included guitar tabs.
Introduction
How’s it going everybody? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson. Today I want to show you an easy finger picking riff. This is the intro for the song Holiday by the Scorpions. So it’s a fairly simple riff and a great one for beginners for finger picking. So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at this.
Holiday Chords
All right so the first thing let’s just go over the chords that we’re going to be using in this. So we’ve got D minor; D string is open, I’m on the second fret of the G string with my second finger, third fret of the B string with my third finger and first of the high E with my first finger. Then we have D minor over C, so that’d be written Dm/C minor so we’re going to continue to have that same D minor chord, but now we’re going to move our bass note from being the open D string to the third fret of the A string and I’m going to use my pinky for that. Then we have B flat major seven (BbM7); so what we’re going to do is we’re going to leave our second and third fingers where they are and our first finger is just going to bar across the first five strings, so now our bass note will be there on the first fret of the A string B flat, my second finger is still on the second fret of the G string and my third finger is still on the third fret of the B string, my first finger is picking up that first fret of the A string and it’s also picking up the first fret of the high E… Then the next chord we’ve got from there we have A suspended four (Asus4); so again we’re going to leave our third and our second and third fingers where they are and we’re going to take our first finger and we’re going to put it on to the second fret of the D string. And then the last chord is just A5; so this is kind of a different it’s not like your regular power chord A5 we’re going to take our first finger and what I do is I just bar it so it’s going across the second fret of the first three strings and then my fourth finger is going to come up here and go across the fifth fret of the first and second string…
Finger Picking Pattern
Alright so the picking pattern for this is P-A-M-I-A-M-I-A. So if you’re new to finger picking, um I did a lesson quite a while ago where I go over the basics of finger picking and stuff and so you’ll understand what the PIMA stuff is and all that is, anyway I’ll just leave a link for that here you can check that out. But in a sense what it is we’re doing here is on this first chord, on the D minor, our thumb is playing the D string, our first finger is playing the G string, second finger is playing the B string and third finger is playing the high E. So your thumb that’s P, so your thumb is P your first finger is I, your middle finger is M and your third finger is A. So the bass note is the D string and then the high E with your third finger, B string with your middle finger and G string with your first finger. So I’m just gonna call this out basically off the strings; one, two, three, four, one two, three, four, five, six. So we’re gonna go four, one, two, three, one, two, three, one. All right so that is basically the picking pattern throughout the whole song, there’s just some slight variations of what strings are on and we’ll cover those as they come.
Holiday Riff
So starting off with that D minor, so again so we’re; four, four, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, and then we’re gonna move to our second chord the Dm/C. So we’re going to take our pinky and we’re just going to bring it up here and put it on the third fret of the A string and now we’re going to do that same picking pattern but now instead of our thumb playing the D string it’s going to play the A string but we’re going to everything else stays the same. So now we’re 5 1 2 3 1 2 3 1, but the difference is on that last time we go to the high E we’re going to remove our first finger so that it’s open. So we’ve got… Then we’re going to move to our BbM7, so I just remove my pinky and leave my second and third finger where they are and just lay my first finger across the first fret, same picking pattern that we just did and again we’re going to end it with the high E string open. So here we’re; five, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, open and then from there we go to our Asus4, so again we’re leaving our second and third fingers where they are and my first finger is going to move from the first fret here of the A string to the second fret of the D string. So now our thumb is gonna go back to the D string, so now we’re back to four, one, two, three, one, two, three, one and then we’re gonna go to that A5. So I just take my first finger and just drop it where it’s at so it’s going across the first four strings at the second fret and then I’m going to bring my fourth finger all the way up here to the fifth fret on the B and E strings and the same picking pattern. So the whole sequence slowly; four one two three one two three one and then move our pinky to do the Dm/C… with the open high E and to the BbM7 to the Asus4… So that’s P A M I…
Conclusion
All right so I hope you enjoyed that and you got something out of it. If you like the lesson be sure to give it a thumbs up. Leave me a comment down below if there’s something you’d like to see covered in a future lesson by myself or one of the other instructors at GuitarControl.com. If you have not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss out any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I’ve got for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
